Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-Representation 1500-1660

Abstract

In what has been commonly regarded as one of the earliest examples of 'modern' autobiographical writing in English - in the sense of a sustained life-narrative consciously designed with a beginning, middle, and end - Thomas Whythorne's manuscript, written about 1576 and discovered in 1955, 'lay[s] open unto you the most part of all my private affairs and secrets', and is structured along the 'ages of man' divisions. The full title of Whythorne's combined life story and collection of musical compositions is; 'A book of songs and sonetts, with longe discourses sett with them, of the chylds lypfe, together with A yoong mans lyfe, and entring into the old mans lyfe. devysed and written with A new Orthografye by Thomas Whythrony, gent'.